Mar 16 2009
Strong to the Finish ‘Cause I Eats Me Spinach
In most of our nutritional plans, there are mainstay foods that we always include. Topping this list is Popeye’s favorite
roughage, spinach.
While our fascination with spinach may be subconsciously due to Popeye’s influence, it may also be due to the fact that spinach is one of the most nutrient dense, alkaline foods available today.
Cultivated over 2,000 years ago in Iran, spinach has long been known to have health promoting properties. Rich in vitamin A, calcium, phosphorous, iron, folate and potassium – not to mention a number of the B vitamins and important phytochemicals; this green, leafy vegetable reins supreme in the, uh, green, leafy vegetable category.
So what do all these vitamins and minerals mean to you? Well, getting these from your fruits and veggies means being able to avoid poorly designed multivitamin and multi-mineral supplements containing low quality vitamins and minerals. It means increasing your ability to stave off cancer. It means increasing your ability to stave off heart disease. It means having a strong antioxidant reserve (spinach ranks high on the oxygen radical absorbance capacity score). To add further support to this argument, it’s interesting to note that spinach extracts are being used by doctors and scientists as functional foods to provide chemoand central nervous system protection as well as anticancer and anti-aging functions.
In addition to these great benefits, spinach is one of the most alkaline foods in the fruit and vegetable category.
Many of our modern diets (especially if we’re eating relatively high protein diets), are very acidic. This dietary acidity, if not balanced by a high intake of basic foods (like spinach), can lead to stress on our muscles and bones since it’s these tissues that can best neutralize dietary acids.
So, if you want to be quick to the finish like Popeye, you’d better be eating your spinach.